Author Topic: German Monsters  (Read 56 times)

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raul

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German Monsters
« on: October 05, 2022, 04:38:42 pm »
Karl Denke
The Cannibal of Silesia
Taken from author Robert Keller

Karl Denke was a popular man in the village of Munsterberg, Lower Silesia. Known for his piety and community spirit, he neither drank nor smoked nor dallied with women. He played the organ in church and carried the cross at funeral processions. He was also renowned for his acts of charity and compassion, being always willing to offer a vagrant or wayfarer a meal and a bed for the night. The people of Munsterberg called him “Papa” or “Vater (Father) Denke.”   

But on Sunday December 21, Father Denke stood accused of a serious crime, a vicious assault on a man named Vincenz Olivier. At around 1 p.m. on the afternoon of that day, Olivier had staggered into the village constabulary, blood seeping from a nasty head wound. He claimed that Karl Denke had attacked him with a pickaxe.

At first, the duty sergeant refused to believe him. The idea of Papa Denke carrying out such a brutal act was impossible to contemplate. But Olivier was so adamant that the sergeant was forced to follow up on his complaint. After the local doctor stitched up Olivier’s head wound and confirmed that it had indeed been inflicted by a pickaxe, Denke was brought in for questioning.

Denke made no attempt to deny the assault. However, he claimed that he’d acted in self-defense. Olivier, he said, had tried to rob him.   

That made perfect sense to the sergeant. He knew that Denke was in the habit of giving shelter to questionable characters. It was inevitable that one of them would turn on him sooner or later. The sergeant returned to questioning Olivier, hoping to get a confession. But Olivier stoutly denied robbery and with neither man prepared to back down, the sergeant decided to hold both of them overnight. The station commander could sort it out in the morning. Such decisions were above his pay grade.   

Denke was placed in a holding cell. He seemed cheerful and not at all perturbed to be spending the night in police custody. But at around 11:30 that evening, the sergeant looked in on him and found him dead. He’d hung himself with a noose fashioned from a handkerchief.
Denke’s suicide left the police perplexed. They couldn’t understand why such a respectable citizen would kill himself over such a minor (and as yet, unproved) charge. The answer to that question would soon be forthcoming. 

Karl Denke was born in Oberkunzendorf, Silesia (modern day Kalinowice, Poland) on August 10, 1870. His parents were wealthy farmers, which was a good thing because, from an early age, Karl was known for his gluttony. He was particularly fond of meat and by the age of 10 would routinely devour two pounds of steak or veal in a single sitting.

A dim-witted boy, Karl was unable to speak until he was six years old. In other ways too, he was different to other children. He was known to seek out danger and seemed to enjoy taking risks. He ran away from home several times. He was also not in the least bit squeamish. He was a rapt spectator whenever animals were slaughtered. As he got older, he insisted on carrying out the butchering himself.         

At age 12, Karl dropped out of school and went to work as an apprentice gardener. He continued in that trade until 1895, when his father died, leaving him a sizable inheritance. Denke, now 25, used the money to fulfill his dream of buying a farm.
However, despite Denke’s agricultural roots, he was clearly not cut out to be a farmer. The farm was an abject failure and he was forced into selling the land, using the proceeds to buy a large house in the village of Munsterberg. Then came the Great War and in its wake a period of hyperinflation. Denke eventually had to sell his home, although he held onto a small apartment on the property. The once wealthy landowner was reduced to selling leather trinkets and shoelaces for a living. Occasionally, he also dabbled in black market pork, pickled after an old Denke family recipe.

Fate had not been kind to Karl Denke, but he refused to allow his misfortune to dampen his spirit. Munsterberg, at the time, was a town of some 9,000 souls, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else. And among its citizenry few were as highly regarded as Karl Denke. Despite his meager resources, he seldom turned away those in need, taking total strangers into his home to share a meal or to spend the night. Now, one of those strangers had accused him of assault and Denke had responded by taking his own life. The question was, why?   

On December 22, 1924, the police turned Denke’s corpse over to his family for burial. Three days later, on Christmas Eve, a contingent of officers went to his apartment to carry out an inventory of his belongings. It was to be a day none of them would ever forget.

The officers had barely begun their search when several of them had to leave the small apartment to throw up in the bushes outside. Three medium-sized pots stood on the stove, filled with chunks of flesh in a congealed cream sauce, skin still intact, some pieces with hairs protruding from the dermis. One pot was only half full, suggesting that Denke had eaten the remainder before his arrest. A pathologist would later verify that the flesh was human and that the cuts were from the buttocks.
And that was only the first of the horrors. 

Pickling in brine, in a wooden barrel, were bones and chunks of meat. The flesh was reddish brown in color, but the pale (and sometimes hairy) skin, still in place, left no doubt as to its origin. On one cut, a navel was clearly visible, on another, a nipple.     

More human remains were found in the shed, chunks of pickled flesh and a barrel full of bones, including 16 femurs, eight elbows, one-hundred-and-fifty ribs, and over 200 toe and finger bones. In addition, there was a collection of teeth, totaling over 150 pieces. All in all, the pathologist estimated that the bones were from at least eight individuals. Remains found later, buried in the yard and in a nearby municipal park, would point to over 40 victims.

There were other indicators of Denke’s carnage too, trunks filled with bloodstained clothing, piles of identity documents and the implements of murder and dissection, three axes; a large wood saw; a pickaxe and three long-bladed knives.

And then there were the bizarre artifacts of Denke’s leather tannery and soap making efforts, belts and suspenders of tanned human skin, shoe laces plaited from human hair and crude bars of soap made from human fat. Denke, it seemed, was not a wasteful man.

It was obvious to all by now that Karl Denke had been living a double life. Yet even as the horrific truth of Denke’s murderous activities came to light, the police were left with one bothersome question. How? How had a man been able to commit wholesale slaughter in such a small town without anyone noticing?

The answer was two-fold. On the one hand, Denke had been exceedingly clever, targeting victims that he knew would not be missed. He’d hang around the railway station, looking for vagrants or strangers who had drifted into town looking for work. Such men were hardly likely to turn down the offer of a bed or a meal. Back at Denke’s apartment, the victim would unknowingly sit down to his final repast. While he was eating, Denke would sneak up behind him and deliver a killing blow with his trusty pickaxe. Had that weapon not failed him in the case of Vincenz Olivier, Denke would likely have gone on killing indefinitely.     

The second reason that Denke escaped detection for so long can be put down to human nature. Denke was a man of impeccable reputation in Munsterberg, few would believe ill of him. But as word leaked out of the horrific finds in Denke’s apartment, several of his neighbors came forward to report the suspicious goings-on they’d witnessed. On one occasion a man was seen running from the house, covered in blood. On another, a vagrant complained to one of Denke’s neighbors that Denke had looped a chain around his neck and tried to throttle him. Neither of these incidents was reported to the police.

Denke’s neighbors also told of the horrendous smells coming from his home and of late night hammering and sawing noises. One man had seen Denke pouring out buckets of blood in the courtyard, others had seen him leaving his apartment in the middle of the night, lugging heavy suitcases, only to return later empty handed. Others were suspicious of Denke’s steady supply of meat at a time when the country was under near famine conditions. They suspected that he was killing and butchering stray dogs, but no one thought to question him about it or to alert the authorities.

In the end, Karl Denke, one of Germany’s worst ever cannibal killers, escaped justice by taking his own life. However, his notorious exploits are not forgotten. The museum in his hometown boasts a display commemorating the infamous cannibal.

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